Do you know that Google Ads (AdWords) can manage your advertising bids on all those advertising platforms without doing anything? Yes, they called it Enhanced Cost Per Click, an automatic way of marketing used by Google Ads so you can place ads managed them conveniently.
Compare to the benefits of Local SEO on making your business rank high on search engines, ECPC helps your business through ad placement that really works for you by using artificial intelligence. There is no wrong in doing everything yourself, like writing SEO-optimized content, but it would benefit you more if you had some help from automation, and give you the freedom to do more. Spend less time managing your ad campaigns and more time growing your business.
In this article, we’ll explain how ECPC works and how it can help you get more value for your ad budget.
What Is Cost Per Click?
Cost per click is an advertising system where you pay every time someone clicks on your ad, and it gets calculated every time the PPC auction runs. For CPC bidding campaigns, you set a maximum cost-per-click bid – or simply “max. CPC” – that’s the highest amount that you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. Advertisers can set a max CPC limit to help keep CPCs down while Google spends the daily budget. Simply put, Cost-per-click (CPC) represents the amount you paid for every ad click in a particular campaign.
CPC is calculated by dividing the total cost of your clicks by the total number of clicks. Your average CPC is based on your actual cost-per-click, which is the actual amount you’re charged for a click on your ad. Your goal should be to get your average CPC and Actual CPC as low as possible under your Maximum CPC bid without losing conversion volume or quality.
What Is Enhanced CPC?
Enhanced Cost Per Click or Enhanced CPC, ECPC if you prefer adjusts your bid each time your ad is eligible to appear, based on how likely that click is to lead to a conversion. ECPC helps you get more conversions from manual bidding.
Enhanced CPC works by automatically adjusting your manual bids for clicks that seem more or less likely to lead to a sale or conversion on your website because the Google Ads platform will know about it, but For ECPC to work as intended, you must turn on conversion tracking. Without it, this bidding strategy is useless – it will never know if it’s driving conversions or not.
If your goal is to maximize conversions or conversion values, you need to have conversion tracking set up, that’s because conversions are key to how Google adjusts your bids. When it comes to conversion value, the ECPC adjusts your bid each time it appears. In fact, the more conversion volume you have, the stronger the Enhanced CPC algorithm actually becomes. By increasing the bids, it maximizes the ads’ effectiveness, causing them to generate more revenue overall.
In my mind, ECPC bidding is kind of a middle-of-the-road option between Conversion Optimizer, and manual CPC bidding. With ECPC bidding, you still set your own bids and bid adjustments.
How Enhanced CPC for Google Ads Works?
We know that Enhanced CPC automatically adjusting your bids for clicks that are likely to result in sales. In other words, if Google Ads determines that you’re bidding too low for a well-performing ad, it will up the bid so that you get increase conversions.
It is done by raising your max CPC bid by about 30% so that you can win the ad space you want, and earn more sales. More conversions are a good thing it seems. But not if it cost too much that wipes out your profit margin. It in fact can drop all the way down to nothing for underperforming ads. That means you must have at least 15 conversions (that’s clicks from potential customers) in your campaign. So that Google Ads will have enough data to make adjustments to your bid. Google just ups your ability to actually compare conversion rates for all of those combinations, in real-time.
Automation, through solutions like enhanced CPC Google Ads, makes it easier to optimize your campaigns and achieve your desired results. Enhanced CPC uses conversion data and auction-time signals to make calculated decisions quickly and effectively.
Enhanced CPC bidding is very similar to manual bidding but allows the Google Ads algorithm to make adjustments to the manually set keyword bid. You can enable Enhanced CPC by simply checking the box below the manual bidding setting or choosing Enhanced CPC from the drop-down menu. If you enable ECPC you can still set the initial bids, and you can also select manual CPC or turn off ECPC whenever you want.
Reasons You Need Enhanced Cost Per Click
When we use something it is important to think of the reasons why we used it. We think of its benefit most of all. We jot down the reasons why you need Enhanced CPC vs Manual CPC and here are some of them.
1. Manual CPC will be a Thing of the Past
Microsoft Advertising has already removed manual CPC for new campaigns. On April 30, 2021, they terminated this policy of using manual CPC to ECPC. Google Ads will likely follow soon according to top PPC companies, though they don’t know when.
2. Save Time and Do More
It is a fact that manually adjusting and monitoring your bids is time-consuming and costly if not done correctly. This makes automation help a lot in minimizing manual tasks and generate sales faster is critical to staying competitive, especially for pay-per-click services. Consulting with a PPC agency is the best step you can take to migrate smoothly to Enhanced CPC. ECPC made this possible.
3. Less Risk on Automated Bidding
A PPC company can help you use ECPC to test the waters for conversion campaigns without exceeding your intended campaign budget. Especially if you are not yet confident in the amount of conversion data you have. That is why you have to choose ECPC or Smart Bidding – either partial AdWords automated bidding or full automation because it makes more sense.
Should you use Enhanced CPC?
Like Google’s other smart bidding strategies, we advise caution with ECPC. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever use it – just that you should understand what you’re getting into before you design your entire ad strategy behind it.
But using an Enhanced CPC bid strategy could be extremely beneficial. Enhanced CPC gives you the control of setting your bids manually and the benefits of Google Ads Smart Bidding, which will optimize your bids for conversions. So, ad group or keyword bid can increase if Google thinks it will lead to a conversion.
Furthermore, Enhanced CPC looks for ad auctions that are more likely to lead to conversions and then raises your maximum CPC bids (after applying any bid adjustments you’ve set) to compete harder for those clicks. According to Google, if a click seems less likely to convert, AdWords will lower your bid.
Conclusion
It is not a matter of should you use ECPC, it a matter of when. Jacob Wulff, senior PPC manager at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency and an industry speaker said, “The removal of manual CPC, especially for Google Ads, is a hot topic in our industry. Shifting to enhanced CPC, testing early, and comparing your results is key to stay ahead of the curve. Get Google’s algorithm and machine learning to work in your favor before it’s too late.”
Here’s why it matters: Any top pay-per-click agency (PPC agency) will tell you that the paid advertising will eventually eliminate manual CPC.
If you don’t have experience with managing your online advertising on a Google Ads campaign or need to budget every last cent, then don’t use Enhanced CPC. Go with manual bidding instead. We suggest getting a highly sought-after digital marketing strategist. A digital marketing expert can do a lot to advance your business. Moreso, Seeking the help of an experienced pay-per-click company can help you integrate your PPC campaigns seamlessly as part of a larger and fully optimized search engine marketing strategy. And, more importantly, it really is optimizing your ad spend. Enhanced CPC is available for Search, Shopping, and Display campaigns.
According to Google: An ad is counted as “viewable” when 50 percent of your ad shows on screen for one second or longer for display ads, and two seconds or longer for video ads.
But as always, every store is different. So you must test these things in your own campaigns. Does Enhanced CPC outperform Manual CPC? Does the conversion value option produce additional benefits?
FAQs
1. Is ECPC smart bidding?
Available as an optional feature with Manual CPC bidding, ECPC is a form of Smart Bidding that uses a wide range of auction-time signals such as browser, location, and time of day to tailor bids to the unique context of each search, but not to the full extent of other Smart Bidding strategies, such as Target CPA and Target ROAS. In terms of ROI, it doesn’t come close to other bid strategies.
2. What is the difference between Enhanced CPC & maximize conversion settings?
Unlike Enhanced CPC, Maximize Conversions is what Google calls a fully automated bidding strategy. The Maximum Conversions bid strategy is designed to get as many conversions as possible while spending your daily budget. There are no additional settings for the advertiser to control as we’ll see in future options.
3. Which bidding strategy should you use?
Manual CPC bid strategies give you more visibility into your campaigns. You’ll also get more hands-on control of the setup, bid strategies, and optimization efforts. If you want to generate traffic to your website, focusing on clicks, Enhanced CPC bidding may be right for your campaign. It gives you more control over your bids than with other automated bid strategies. If you want to increase brand awareness by focusing on impressions maybe that strategy is for you. Depending on what you prefer is the strategy to use. Although, Enhanced CPC is one of the most popular bidding strategies in Google Ads. It’s one step up from manual CPC bidding.
